Monitoring urban sanitation: Old challenges and new approaches

In September 2011, the SHARE consortium and WaterAid brought together 19 researchers and policy-makers with expertise in water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), demography, and service provision to share knowledge and experiences to develop a research agenda for improving the monitoring of sanitation in urban areas.

The group included leading figures from academia and organisations with a track record of raising awareness, generating evidence and exploring new approaches to urban monitoring, as well as policy-makers working for major bilateral and multi-lateral organisations. Participants described experiences and updates from India, Kenya, and Zambia to illustrate the problems and suggest solutions. They assessed existing knowledge in order to establish what we now know, followed by structured group work to respond to two questions related to improving urban monitoring and providing sanitation facilities for slum communities: what don’t we know and would like to know about: a) what we need to monitor?, and b) what is actually monitorable?